


I Didn't Ask For This (We Never Really Do)

by YouLookGoodInLeather



Category: A Court of Thorns and Roses Series - Sarah J. Maas
Genre: Enemies to Lovers, F/M, Fluff, M/M, Opposites Attract, enemies to comrades, pretentious dumb artsy writing style who knows whats going on this is a hot mess, varian and amren are onto you tarquin
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-10-10
Updated: 2017-10-13
Packaged: 2019-01-15 11:01:17
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 5
Words: 5,959
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12319716
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/YouLookGoodInLeather/pseuds/YouLookGoodInLeather
Summary: All these years of living in the light and reviling the dark; It’s the beginning of a chance or maybe a change and he didn’t ask for it but it’s with him at 3am on his pillow and he thinks that maybe just maybe he likes it.___________________Tarquin is the High Lord of Summer and yet here he is falling in love with a man born of shadows.





	1. Easy

**Author's Note:**

  * For [PaperbackTrash](https://archiveofourown.org/users/PaperbackTrash/gifts).



> the title is how i feel about this bloody crack ship dammit tumblr *shakesfist*

The calling comes all too fast and all without Tarquin’s noticing. 

It starts at the time when it most should not, in the wake of a battle that devastated the kingdom he has slaved for years to rebuild. It starts when he is faced with those who betrayed his trust and worse, proved to him that he really is as naive and incompetent as the whispers say. It starts at the break of day.

He sees him across the fields of injured, a quiet statue amongst the busy and the dying. They’re leaving now and he doesn’t even catch his name, only his image. The sight of him remains just long enough to spy the darkness that webs across his skin, the shadows that are at beck and call to him as war-hounds are to their masters.

He sees him just long enough to know the rumours of the Night Court are true; They really do birth monsters.

 

***

 

A name does not next follow. 

Instead, fear is the next installment. It is taught to him with true mastery of the art, as he listens from behind a door as secrets are carved out a man’s soul. His court learns the names of traitors that helped Hybern in that night, but he learns that monsters do not have to say a word to ruin a man completely. There had been no sounds of violence or coercion, but a simple three act play: Silence to screaming to confession.  

Yet, though the torturer’s efficiency is impressive, it’s not what chills the High Lord’s spine. That comes later, when he spies him on a balcony gripping onto stone and staring at his hands. There is something in his face, the way night wreaths around his throat, that leaves Tarquin hearing screaming, even when the only noise is that of the waves upon the rocks. 

It scares him, to wonder what it must be like inside the mind of someone like that; A man who can undo someone in a breath’s moment wielding thought alone. On whom did he sharpen the weapons of his trade, and on which poor souls did he practice?

Looking at his moonlit face, Tarquin wishes the answer were less obvious. It’s easier to hate them when the monsters are not monsters to themselves.

 

***

 

The name comes at the High Lords’ congregation, though that is not what Tarquin remembers of him when he goes unto his chambers and and finds sleep is only catchable by dawn. What sticks around is just one moment, on where the facade breaks and it’s revealed the monster cares. 

And as Tarquin sat there, watching the shadow boy destroy Eris for the sakes of one woman and one specific woman alone, he felt the growing tug inside his stomach. Mor does not look happy as she is fought for, a nauseous repulsion on her face, and yet he’s left envious. 

He has lived a life of playing fair and smiling masks even in the face of the depravity their world inflicts upon those who deserve so much better. It is hard not to think that maybe becoming monsters is not such a vile response to monstrocity. It is hard not to want a little piece of that fury worn plain upon his face. 

All these years of living in the light and reviling the dark; It’s the beginning of a chance or maybe a change and he didn’t ask for it but it’s with him at 3am on his pillow and he thinks that maybe just maybe he likes it.

 

***

 

Azriel.

His name is Azriel, and it sits on Tarquin’s tongue far too often these days. He mentions him in passing and in council meets and no matter how much disinterest he feigns when asking after him Varian still notices and looks at him. He doesn’t say anything but two months later, now the war is over, when Amren comes to visit she brings a man of shadow in tow and this time, when he says ‘Azriel’, the man looks back and he realises. 

“Varian said you wanted my input on the new legislation,” is all the shadowsinger says, ignorant to the squirming it sets of in Tarquin’s stomach. He’s as cold and distant as ever until a soft smile breaks through and the realisation condenses. “I look forward to working with you.”

 

***

 

Long nights spent arguing and bickering and debating over semantics and rules and implications turn into long months, and Cresseida says it perfectly when she informs her High Lord, “I haven’t seen you look this happy in years.”

Happy is reductive of reality, but she’s not wrong. The passion for justice and  _ good _ Tarquin grew up nursing in childhood did not fare so well in an adulthood of war and famine, yet with peace comes possibility. And there every step of the way is Azriel, a soundboard for ideas and innovation. 

No one else has ever shared his drive for improvement like the Illyrian, although you’d never guess it from watching them. Where Tarquin enthuses and rambles and gesticulates more and more with every passing hour, Azriel is nearly silent throughout the evening. His delivery is calm and practical, if a little marred in dry condescension when Tarquin gets particularly over-enthusiastic. Yet each night he insists on staying up longer and longer to straighten out some new idea, to the point where one day they look up from their desk and reference books to realise dawn has split across the horizon. 

“For the first time in my life,” Tarquin says as he watches the day meet night outside, “I think we might really stand a chance of altering things for the better.” A shadow drifts across the glass, and he looks up just in time to spot Azriel as he kisses him.   
  



	2. Harbinger

They do not speak about the kiss.

At first, Tarquin excuses it as resulting from the absence of opportunity. He has reconstruction to oversee, and two days later Azriel is called away for Rhysand’s stag do. Though apprehension leaves the High Lord restless, it starts as childish excitement.

When the Illyrian’s night away turns into a week, and soon a month, it becomes difficult to call his insomnia optimistic. Even stoic Varian is sympathetic when on pre-dawn runs he catches his lord pacing out on shores and throne rooms. He’d never say anything direct, of course, but he is kind enough to try and reassure with news that Amren is visiting once more in just a week.

And Tarquin, a naïve idiot as all their enemies love to say, is foolish enough to hope.

 

***

 

Amren arrives alone. She does so in her usual fashion, striding into their throne room like it is land she is merely allowing them to live upon. With a kiss upon her lover’s cheek, she turns to face his master.

And Tarquin thinks he is quite over it. He has relocated the blame to the lack of sleep they both had, to how so many nights spent alone together is enough to drive anyone to a fit of delusional passion. He’s even composed enough to give the monster he once condemned to death a smile of perfect civility. 

She takes one look at him and leaves. 

Varian hasn’t a clue where she’s vanished to, but his nerves show in how he joins Tarquin in his late night fretting. The framework for his new society remains untouched beneath fresh paperwork, abandoned since an Illyrian left him with nothing but headaches. The pair sit and wait and wonder how one court that claims to be their ally has reduced them to this.

 

***

 

Three days later, two members of their plague return. Amren does not physically drag her Illyrian companion inside the palace, but any time he dares slow a sharp look from her soon brings him into her shadow. 

“Apologies,” she says with a smile at the baffled court, never having indulged in titles or honourifics. “I realised I’d forgotten someone.” She slips to Varian’s side, living Azriel alone in the centre of the room. “Varian mentioned the pair of you had yet to finish. And I know how Az hates leaving things half done. 

Tarquin does not like to think he’s staring, but it wouldn’t matter; the winged male does not look back at him. She can’t fix that though, so she drags her chosen Summer boy away with devilish smiles, and without words says her role is done. This they have to sort out on their own.

Though not a coward, Tarquin doesn’t think he can face that quite so soon, after a month of nursing wounds he refused to deem as such. “I’ll meet you in the library as usual then,” he says, and without noticing the glance thrown his way, he escapes to anywhere but here.

 

***

 

Unexpectedly, the Illyrian arrives right on time. He opens the door to find Tarquin by that same window as before – if he even remembers it in such detail, if he too has spent every other second revising it in his brain – looking out at the sea and the setting sun behind it. 

“Do you really want me here?” Azriel asks, closing the door but remaining guard before it.

“I don’t know,” Tarquin answers honestly. It is a mistake to be honest, he thinks, for he was raised to believe that such a thing would only get him killed in a world like this. Yet in the other he’d thought he had witnessed somehow who could be so anyway, who could wear both rage and silence without embarrassment.

“You can say it, you know.” Azriel sounds maybe not so calm as always, maybe there’s just a hint of a wobble in his voice, or maybe Tarquin is just being a naïve young idiot and projecting his foolish hoping onto him. “I won’t be offended if you ask me to leave. I can just tell Amren we finished tonight.” Is he really so thick as to believe that _that_ is why the blood-drinker brought him here?

More importantly, does he really believe that what Tarquin is fighting down with every passing second is the urge to send him away? This man, who seemed so impossibly free from the restraints of their society, who surely had to be impossibly smart to accomplish such a thing. And then he remembers the moonlight, the balcony – the screaming.

“You’re making no sense,” Tarquin breathes, because nothing this man does is comprehendible to him. He fights for so much good but seems to think himself so bad. What is with these Night Court fae and their rejection of their own redeeming qualities? Though Rhysand may have relinquished his act of Tyrannical Dictator, their personas as villains still seem to cling to them like a scent. 

Azriel just frowns at him. “I mean, if I just tell her that-” Tarquin doesn’t let him finish, because he’s next to him and kissing him and realising this man is just as naïve and foolish as he himself could ever be.

 

***

 

“Was bringing him here a good idea?” Varian asks from where he is knelt before his self-appointed Queen, her foot playing lazily in his hair.

“Oh please,” Amren drawls. She sits perched atop a dresser, sipping from a golden goblet of blood the petrified servants left for her earlier. “I haven’t seen anyone look quite so tortured since Rhysand. Your little lord will thank me for it later.” 

“But if Az didn’t want to-”

“Azriel,” Amren says quite factually, “is an idiot. One who thinks he’s a burden on everyone. And besides, I’d had quite enough of him moping about, especially when there’s a wedding on the way.” She looks down at the male before her and smiles the kind of smile that would put anyone on their knees, were they not there already. “Now please remember who it is you’re _supposed_ to be lamenting about.” 

Varian’s calling is not dissimilar, though he was answered much sooner; But then Amren never was afraid of the light.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> amren doesn't have time for this slow burn fic shit


	3. Dawn

Doors and walls aren’t as comfortable as romance novels would have Tarquin believe. However, it is hard to care about their deception or even the ridges digging into his back when there are chapped lips against his and he feels like his insides are disintegrating.

His undoing has a brow knitted together just like he did that night on the balcony, and whilst Tarquin is flushed and warm, he is pale and clammy. It warns of his pulling back, which follows moments later accompanied by a wrist covering his mouth. “Don’t,” he warns the man he kissed first, whom he kissed back. “You don’t want to.”

“What is with your lot,” Tarquin is trying to sound angry because he is he really is but it’s all mixed up with want and anguish and an ugly kind of pity, “and assuming you know what is best for me?”

“Because I know _me_ ,” Azriel answers, and from his wincing he had held no intention of being so honest. And Tarquin begins to realise that this ability to expose oneself that he has envied in this man so long belongs far more to him than to the other, though it is still him who inspires it.

“So do I.” It’s an arrogant claim, but - and maybe it’s the way he said it, or something about his eyes - it stills the man before him into silence, not protest. They look at each other, and though it’s for too long and unpopulated by words, it doesn’t feel uncomfortable. It is strange to Tarquin to realise that this man is neither monster nor myth, but that they are equals; And stranger still to find that it only serves to make him more attractive.

He holds out a hand, palm skywards, fingers extended. “The rest of the world can wait until tomorrow.” It should embarrass him, and yet with perfect calm he asks, “Tonight, will you come to bed with me?”

 

***

 

They are well trained in staying up till morning, and this night is no different.

As sunlight streams in through the undrawn curtains, illuminating his naked skin, Tarquin rests in the other’s lap and looks down at him. This close, the scars he noticed during evenings spent pouring over plans are unavoidable and touchable. They feel warm beneath his thumb, rough where mutilated hands stroke curls up his spine.

Though so much still lies unanswered, and there is a sense of finality in Azriel’s eyes, they leave speaking for another evening. For now they explore one another’s bodies, the way Tarquin arches into touches and Azriel shrinks from them before melting back moments later.

And all the while Tarquin has this quiet feeling in his stomach that this might mean more than it was was ever meant to.

 

***

 

Azriel is called away the next day to deal with something in the Day Court, but this time Tarquin sleeps just fine. He has their plans drawn up into a docket and mails it to Rhysand for feedback, and busies himself quite happily with aiding in rehoming those bereft of shelter in the war.

A week later, Azriel returns. He does so unannounced, knocking upon the study door one evening, not entering till greeted. The finality in his expression that left Tarquin so at unease last time has faded, replaced by a shy caution that is perhaps more seductive than it should be. “May I come in?” He asks. The door is opened wider.

He crosses to the window, the one they seem intent on using as distraction from discomfort, but looks anywhere other than outside and at the other. “I never thought I’d say this,” he risks looking up, and meets Tarquin’s gaze with the barest hint of a smile, “but I’d like to try.” As if he is the younger, he swallows and glances away. “With you.”

Out of relief and disbelief, Tarquin finds himself snorting. “Just what did Helion do to you?”

 

***

 

They do not mean to keep it a secret, it just happens to be one.

Given how they rarely encounter one another in public, it’s hard to transmit the message without shouting it down the hallways. Tarquin spends half his days out aiding with repairs and organisation, and Azriel spends the others at the Night Court. If his fellow Inner Circle members notice his absence in the evenings, they do not mention it. It seems unlikely, given how he rarely slept much and often ventured elsewhere to nullify the hours of the nights.

Yet after this thing that neither of them anticipated lasts for several months, it starts to feel like a restraint, rather than a liberation from others’ judgement. “I don’t want to just see you in the evenings,” Tarquin tells him over dinner in his quarters. “And I don’t just want to see you in private.”

Thus far their time together has been composed of a lot of kissing and nights entangled in sheets or books or shores, and though maybe it’s selfish of him, he wants more. He wants more time working together and talking together and to get to hold his hand even in the daylight. A night together whenever they can steal such a thing feels almost like a tease, and now that he knows this feeling in his bones isn’t just dreaming, he’s ready to ask after more.

Though he expects outright denial, instead he receives silence. Stirring his wine with a delicate circling of his wrist, Azriel bites his tongue in thinking. “You know I’m not good with affection,” he says, gaze lowered. “Especially not in public.”

“I know. I’m not asking for anything but trying. I just want more of you.”

“You’ve watched me hurt a lot of people.” He looks up and his hand stills, eyes calculating. “And you know the other won’t come easy. You’re certain you want…”

“You,” Tarquin finishes for him, because he’s learned by now that even admitting to his self-loathing is difficult for the other. “Yes. I’m certain.”

Azriel drains his glass and sets it down. “Okay. Let’s try.” Looking up, his hesitant expression vanishes with a grin. “I know just how to tell them.”

 

***

 

It is impolite to upstage a wedding, but it is also impolite to trick someone into liking you so that you can steal from them, so with this, Tarquin shall consider their two courts equal.

He has the common decency merely to sit next to Azriel during the ceremony - a surprisingly understated and intimate affair held in a chapel up in the Illyrian mountains where once the Night Lord’s parents wed - and although the Cassian beside them seems surprised by his presence, nothing is said other than a friendly hello. The woman next to him  - Nesta, if Tarquin remembers correctly - shoots them several narrowed gazes, but then that seems to be her habit for everyone.

Come the reception afterwards, they do manage to cause quite a stir, much to both their not so subtle delight, though Az does a much better job of looking unaffected by the looks they draw. Following Feyre and Rhys having the traditional first dance, they along with several others join them out on the mountain palace’s enormous open air dance floor.

At first the glances are just a little surprised to see the pair together, understandable given how most gathered have never before seen the pair in the same room together, let alone well acquainted enough to dance. And there are plenty of friends and allies dancing without it implying more, so they are delegated to the same category as them.

“I suppose we’ll just have to do something more dramatic another time,” Tarquin murmurs with a sigh, because he’s surprised Az is comfortable with doing something this public, let alone anything else.

“Oh?” Az hums without looking at him, busy returning Cassian’s exaggerated waving with a smile of acknowledgement. “I was rather hoping you’d let me do something dramatic now.”

As seems to be a frequented past time of his, Az takes Tarquin completely by surprise by kissing him. And this time, he lets him kiss him back for as long as he damn well likes.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> amren: *in the background downing her tenth glass of wine/blood* uh, _finally._


	4. Twilight

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I am so sappy for this pairing it is ridiculous

The most delirious by far is Cassian.

Even when they’ve deserted the dancefloor in favor of consuming large quantities of wine by the bar, he remains avidly by their side - much to a lingering Nesta’s chagrin. “But, when did this happen? How did I not know about this?”

“About a year ago,” Azriel answers nonchalantly, watching the dancers with a shoulder pressed flush against Tarquin’s. “Give or take a week or so.”

“A year,” Cassian repeats, mortified. Tarquin would think him jealous were it not for how many times he’d congratulated them (ten and counting, thus far). “But- But why didn’t you tell me?”

“It wasn’t my place to tell.”

“Hang on,” Tarquin interrupts, looking over at his wedding date. “Yes it was. I wouldn’t have minded you telling him.”

Exhaling, Azriel swaps hands for his wineglass and uses the newly freed one to link their adjacent fingers. “I’ve told you, I still don’t think you should commit to me like this.” More quietly he adds, “I’m always waiting for you to realise you’ve made a mistake.”

Cassian watches on in abject horror and delight as Tarquin proceeds to kiss the other so hard and long that no one gathered can possibly miss it, especially when it spills and shatters half the glasses from the table he pins him against. “I’m going to keep doing that,” he warns a breathless Azriel beneath him in a low mumble, “until you realise you are anything but a mistake.”

 

***

 

For the first time, Tarquin spends the night in the Night Court, and isn’t half as terrifying as he’d imagined.

Nightmares don’t bleed from the walls and the screams of tortured innocents don’t echo up from the basement. In fact, the main noise complaint is that of Feysand in the upper floors and the noisy bickering of Nesta and Cassian resounding through from the library.

“No wonder you prefer not to spend the night here,” Tarquin mutters, reclined upon a sofa in the drawing room. Azriel sits by his feet, one hand resting between his lover’s knees, the other leafing through some report from his network of spies. “Is it always like this?”

“Oh no,” he assures him dryly. “Normally they’re much louder. They’re on their best behaviour for your visit, I made them promise.”

Snickering, Tarquin slumps further back into the cushions and closes his eyes, listening to the way the ceiling shakes from things he’d rather not imagine, and the sounds of books being hurled against walls and heads. “How have they taken it?”

“What, behaving? Poorly. They were outraged that I insinuated anything so much as hinting that they’re all impossible to live with.”

“No you bat,” Tarquin cusses him, toeing him in the ribs without bothering to open his eyes. “Us. This. You daring to take a lover, as dear Cassian put it.”

“Oh that,” Az murmurs, making it quite plain he knew exactly what was meant in the first place. Setting his paperwork aside, he rests both hands atop Tarquin’s and looks over at him. “It varies. Mor’s relieved. I think Cass is jealous I’ve somehow seduced someone he hasn’t.”

“Thoroughly seduced.”

“Amren just tells me I’m welcome any time it comes up.”

“Remind me to thank her some day.”

Sitting up, Tarquin shifts to bring them side by side, returning to his napping upon Az’s shoulder. “You don’t still think this is a mistake, do you?” A lot depends on the answer, because he’s finally summoned the courage to name that twisting in his gut but to admit it out loud is about as dangerous as trying to bed The Weaver.

Without replying, Az rests their heads together and strokes the back of his neck in that way of his that were they behind locked doors would have Tarquin doing unspeakable things in return. “You’re going to make me say it out loud?” Az asks, sighing again when he gets a silence that says ‘yes’ in answer. “I love you, Tarquin. And… I don’t know how, but no, I don’t think you’re making a mistake. I-” A quick glance confirms he’s flushed up to the ears. “I think I work. With you. Somehow. It feels…”

“Right?”

“Yes. It feels right. Somehow, I don’t feel like I’m here at your expense.”

Slipping into his lap, Tarquin takes his jaw betwixt his hands and looks his right in the eye so he can see his sincerity plain and simple. “You never were, Azriel. And I don’t believe you ever will be.” Far too sombre and grave for this to be their first time saying such things, but serious nonetheless, he says, “Though what I can’t believe is you beat me to it. I love you too, Az.”

 

***

 

At long last, they get the go ahead to start their disquiet revolution.

Everyone has edited and debated and rehashed the docket of ideas for restructuring the society they’re bound in, from Rhys to Helion to even - to everyone’s shock and some’s horror - Tamlin. Most unexpectedly of all, it was Feyre who insisted he at the very least get acquainted with the new fabric of society, regardless of his feedback. Yet whilst he left the composition largely unchanged, his input on how to maintain economic stability is not unhelpful.

“We can still make use of him without liking him,” Feyre says as way of explanation, when Tarquin has spent a week of nights in her court’s library trying to uncover some ulterior motive or hidden agenda in the proposed changes. “Although... checking things one more time won’t hurt.”     

It’s a labour of love and little sleep and a lot of frosty arguments with Azriel over touchy subjects for the both of them, but by its end, exhausted and spent, they are grinning at one another.

“Have we missed something?” Tarquin asks, slumped back in his seat at his study’s desk. The table has been repositioned before ‘their’ window, both for the better view and as a failed attempt to prevent them from losing track of time.

“I think that really is everything.” Opposite him, Az flicks through the thick compilation whilst beneath, his bare toes trace circles around his lover’s ankles. It earns him a chuckle.

“Come on, focus. You’re sure? You’re sure we’ve thought of everything?”

Pausing to reread a few sections, Az takes him time before setting what is something of a child to them down. “I’m not. But, I do think the only way to improve now is to learn from experience. See how it plays out amongst the courts. Don’t get complacent. Although,” a slow smile grows to match the lazy patterns of his foot, “I’d say we’d earned at least a night or two of complacency. Maybe even a week.”

“Well aren’t you extravagant,” Tarquin drawls back, mirroring the deviant expression.

Casting their work aside, Az draws back his chair and stands to stretch, perfectly aware he does so with languid sensuality, like a cat awakening from sunning itself, all long limbs and untucked shirts exposing midriffs. “Well, you’re more than welcome to stay here and play the diligent monk. I for one am going to bed.” With affected disinterest, he swans off and vanishes. Moments later, his head reappears at the door. With airy smiles and tones, he asks, “I don’t suppose you’d care to join me?”

“You go up,” Tarquin dismisses him, although he’s careful to smile enough to avoid it feeling like rejection. “I’ll let you drag me down into decadency in a minute, promise.”

With an understanding nod, the other departs to what might as well be their shared chambers by now, to the point where the servants prepare fresh clothes and meals for their frequent guest on automatic. The High Lord remains, drumming his fingers against the wood and staring out at the ocean.

On the horizon, the setting sun is drips away from sinking below the waterline, the sky awash with crimsons and greys and dark, invasive blues. The curving coastline that hugs the palace’s bay leaves the rest of the city on display, its lanterns taking on their daily light one by one, casting their gentle amber hue up into the starless sky. Strains of music echoes across the waves, mixing with the calls of the last fishermen returning to shore.

Not three years past, those same shores held half as many dashes of fire, and though Summer has retained its love of music and dance through thick and thin, it has long been steeped in the depths of festering war wounds and poverty, regularly aggravated by the racial tensions that sunk in from the west and the south.

Though they have yet to officially alter most of the power structures and systems of social hierarchy, the view outside seems to promise a chance, which is all Tarquin has ever hoped for. If so much change could fill one shoreline in a breath of years, what could they accomplish in a lifetime?

Before rising, Tarquin lingers; He pens a letter to Rhysand, a rambling, nonsensical thing that is too sentimental for official business and he’s not sure he shall send it, but if the last fews years and all those nights spent curled up in uncertain arms taught him anything, it is the reward of the vulnerability some few have started to show him.

Tucking the letter under the docket, he gives the window one last glance before drawing the curtains, and retiring to his chambers.   



	5. Close

The calling comes all too fast and all without Azriel’s noticing. 

It starts at the time when he is most vulnerable to it, when Mor has been swept away by a firebird girl and even ever diligent Cassian is distracted by a woman bred from storms. It starts when he is faced by all that which he feels lies beyond his grasp, people so golden and good they make him feel like a monster. It starts in the dead of night.

He feels it first one night in Tarquin’s study, when nothing of particular importance is occurring. The lord is puzzling over theories of how to successfully integrate different communities without destroying their respective culture, not even looking at him but rather some essay or text on his lap. His face is lined with frustration but, and Az is pretty sure he’s unaware of it, he’s smiling too. There’s no pretention, no sterile nobility in that smile; this is a thrill to him. 

Az sees that smile just long enough to know the claims about Tarquin are true; He really does believe in what he preaches.

 

***

 

Love does not next follow.

Instead, loyalty builds up in droves within his chest. It is won from him without intention, almost unconsciously, as he spends his days extracting secrets in waiting for his nights. Few people have ever seemed genuine to him, for his childhood was lived beneath the hatred of one deemed benevolent by the public, and at every turn falsehoods have sprung from the kinds of shadows he cannot control. 

This man is different. He reminds him of Rhys in many ways, though that masochistic self-sacrificing streak that unhinges him about his own lord is not present in the Summer counterpart. Practical to a fault, he does not hate himself the way Azriel thought everyone must do. No faked joy or avoidance of the difficult plagues him like he knows runs chords of tension through the Inner Circle. 

When Tarquin is lost, he is lost. When he is angry, he is angry. When an idea strikes him, it bolts through his body and seizes every fibre of his being, from his elated eyes to his wild gestures. It scares him a little, to witness someone burn so brightly. 

With fear soon comes respect, and he finds himself caring less and less about his daylight missions, and more and more about witnessing this roman candle of a being. Catharsis, it becomes a kind of ritual, expunging the horrors of the day with that smile of his that feels like scalding water cleansing his skin in the best of ways.

Watching him, Azriel wishes his soul were less obvious. It’s easier to detach from believers when they do not believe themselves.

 

***

 

Lust comes unexpectedly, amongst sleep deprivation and a dizzy kind of ecstasy, fueled by thundering debates and soft sunlight. The idea that someone so magnificent could be touchable mutates to aphrodisiac; he kisses him. 

It is like touching the sun. It feels too much, too hot, too overwhelming, to the point where he flees back to the familiar crevices of Rhys and shadows. Yet now he knows what’s out there, that his cynical derision of all species is not an unbroken rule. Men like that really do exist. And so now what’s his excuse?

And when return turns into union, with kisses all down his back, he finds the burning somehow pleasant. Though he knows the spotlight cannot linger on one such as him, it’s too entrancing to pull away. The burn feels worth the price. 

He is all too happy to pay.

 

***

 

So when repetitions transmutes this brief affair into what he fears might be genuine affection, he feels a fraud. What trick has he unwittingly played on one who deserves only honesty? How has he fooled such splendour into lavishing away on rot like him? 

And it isn’t easy. All those urges to accept that he might be worthy of warm touches burn more close to bone than any rejection ever could. For with the idea that he might be worthwhile comes the concept that he must  _ do _ worthwhile things. No longer should he be an instrument to be wielded. Like this, he finds himself culpable. 

Yet as the cold, stony flooring of his bitterness is torn away beneath his feet, there’s elation with the falling. For below lies not further depths of loathing, but a freedom to join this sun made man. 

They fight and argue and he holds he own and in turn realises maybe his tongue does have something to say after all. The sun before him becomes fallible, and he rises from the ranks of the condemned. 

There are things he can  _ do _ . Worlds he can change. Shadows he no longer merely knows, but can meld and alter, or wipe out altogether. 

And all the while beside him is that burning smile and touch to guide him every time he washes up on familiar dark shores in his head. It comes in kisses and it comes in scoldings and exasperated cussing and laughter and all of it is coloured by a vividity he’s never known before. 

As the world around him intensifies, and he finds he does not shy away this time, he realises: So this is love. 

 

***

 

Come completion of their workings, he is the first to retreat to bed. It’s quiet in the other’s room, curtains still undrawn to leave the silver of the sea a sloping mirror from the shore. Summer’s nights are hot and humid, though the open windows ventilate a steady breeze that leaves him shivering as he strips to shirtless.  

Padding out unto the balcony, he rests against the ledge and looks out across the shore. And there, down below, is Tarquin, gazing up at him. 

They met like this once before, though Azriel never admits to having seen the other from shame. This time, instead of turning, he stays and gazes back. Distant music drifts back to them, and for no particular reason at all, they both end up smiling at one another for a long, long time. 

**Author's Note:**

> i have an awful feeling this ship is going to become a 'thing' for me
> 
> I know this is fluffy for me but... hate it? like it? I'm aiming to do one less floofy for them soon.


End file.
